Wiregrass Gallery Featured Artist: Kern Cunningham

After graduating from the Georgia Institute of Technology with a B.S. and an M.S. in Architecture, I worked in Atlanta for 35 years before returning to my hometown of Albany, Georgia. Making art was an early childhood interest as well, seeming countless hours exploring the woods and fields. A primary influence was my artistic Aunt Angie. One of my earliest memories is learning to mix color with tempera paint and a morning having made purple and a seeming acre of white painted porch as a canvas. In high school, Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, and Abstraction caught my attention through a gifted high school art teacher, Peggy Braun. I took up painting in earnest at the beginning of the Covid pandemic as a contemplative practice, working in watercolor, acrylic, and now, primarily in oil. I paint because I like to play with color. I compose work primarily in the genre of landscapes.  Historically, landscape as a subject is more universal in the ability to convey emotional content. I am interested in that primary emotional content from the contemplative aspect. The painting is a mechanism for me to explore the nature of reality. Recently I have begun painting en plein air. This has taken this investigation to a higher level.